Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Archery Party - Games and Medals

We kept the organized games to a minimum at this party. Several reasons, the most important being the kids were now old enough not to require entertaining or activity-management. Once they'd made their archery sets, we knew they'd be happiest just learning to use them. Grandpa Desmond provided us with ideas for more games but we were unable to even set them up because of the strong wind that day. These included bottles, cans and even cardboard boxes (yay!) as targets to knock over. We also considered tissue-paper in big frames (e.g. hoola hoops) hung from trees for the kids to shoot arrows through. Again, this idea was thrown out because of the wind.

The only structured activity we had at this party, therefore, were these hoops that we hung all over the yard.

Here's how we made them.

Remember those foam pipe things we used for both the bow grips and the arrowheads? You wouldn't believe how versatile these are.

We used the single long, unslit tubes (the ones on the left in the picture below),

inserted a short bit of PVC pipe or a fat dowel

and connected the ends

into a circle.

Couldn't be easier.

Then we got streamers

and wrapped them

to make six different colored hoops.

Which we then hung from trees (and anchored to the ground with stakes because of the wind)

and the kids went all over the yard trying to shoot an arrow into every hoop. It wasn't as easy at it looked, especially for the kids who had never used a bow before. But they learnt quickly, especially when they were allowed to practise at their own pace without adults holding daft competitions to stress them out (we offered lessons, though). When they were done, they got medals to eat.

These were just homemade sugar cookies with a hole punched out.

We frosted them to look like targets

and then strung them up with ribbons to go around necks.

One of the guests had a gluten allergy so Emily made her a perler bead medal instead and we told her she was lucky because she was the only one who'd be able to keep her medal beyond a day.

This brings us to the end of the Archery Party tutorials! One last birthday-related post tomorrow: homemade gifts for Emily!

It's nice doing parties for older kids!How thoughtful of Emily to make a Perler medal for her friend. I hope that's not the actual medal in the picture though, or her friend isn't "too" allergic, since it's touching the cookies. It's hard to take into account every kid that might have special needs, so when you can, that's awesome!!

Hello and Welcome!

I am a gratefully unemployed mom of three girls, all of whom are growing up much too soon! I like piles of warm, fresh laundry, the smell of salt air near the beach where I used to live, making lists, anything round (like heads) and the quiet evenings sitting with the man of the house after the kids are in bed.

Copyright

You are welcome to link to this blog and to any post on this blog and use ONE or TWO photos for that purpose. Do not use photos of my children. You are welcome to pin images from my blog, if those photos do not have my children's faces in them. Please contact me if you want to use the text on, or more photos from, this blog. Do not post my tutorials on your sites. Do not translate tutorials from this blog into other languages on your site. The ideas and instructions in the tutorials are free - but please use them to only make stuff for yourself or for gifts and not to sell. Ta! For more information, this and this might be helpful.